WSOF 5's Elvis Mutapcic wants continued big challenges on path to a title

WSOF 5's Elvis Mutapcic wants continued big challenges on path to a title

Elvis Mutapcic already has one middleweight title on his mantle Now he wants another.

Mutapcic (13-2) won Maximum Fighting Championships’s 185-pound title nearly a year ago. Then he defended it in February.

Now he has his sights set on a belt for World Series of Fighting. A world title is something he covets more than anything else in the sport, like most fighters. But there still are limits on what he’ll do to get there.

Mutapcic on Saturday meets Jesse Taylor (26-9) in the semifinals of a four-man middleweight tournament to crown WSOF’s first middleweight champion. Their fight takes place at WSOF 5 at Revel Atlantic City in New Jersey. Main-card fights air live on NBC Sports Network following prelims on MMAjunkie.com.

Mutapcic wants that strap. But if he ever had to fight a teammate to do it, you can count him out.

“Teammates, to me, we’re like brothers,” Mutapcic recently told MMAjunkie.com Radio. “We help each other get better and push each other. To me, that’s the same as fighting my brother, which I wouldn’t do. I might go up or down a weight class or try to wait it out. It’s hard to say, but I really can’t see myself fighting one of my teammates. I guess I’d be a No. 1 contender for a while.”

That’s a common stance in the MMA world, of course. He’s certainly not the first to say he’d never fight a teammate. But when push comes to shove in this sport, that doesn’t always hold true.

Mutapcic personally can’t understand fighters who are able to turn a “brother,” a teammate, into a temporary enemy.

“We work so hard to be a world champion one day,” he said. “When you’re so close to that goal, maybe they’re not as close to their training partners as I am. Or maybe they just want to be a world champion more (than keep a friendship), which I don’t understand … But people are different.”

Mutapcic brings a five-fight winning streak into his WSOF debut, and he’s won 10 of his past 11 fights. Included in that stretch are wins over three veterans of “The Ultimate Fighter” – Zak Cummings, Cezar Ferreira and Sam Alvey – which is rather perfect since he tried to get on the show, but didn’t make the cut.

Against Taylor, he’ll be gunning for his fourth win over a “TUF” vet. Taylor has won six straight and has experience fighting for Strikeforce, DREAM, MFC and the UFC after reaching the finals of “TUF 7” – but getting kicked off the show for an incident after winning in the semifinals.

“He’s been around a long time,” Mutapcic said. “He was on ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ that I tried to get on. But he’s got so much experience and has beaten so many good guys. And he’s a good wrestler, and that’s always a challenge. You’ve got to constantly adjust your game to somebody of that level. So to me, it’s a challenge and there’s nothing better out there than a good challenge to keep it going.”

“To me, if I’m not going up in competition every time I fight, I lose motivation,” he said. “If I don’t have respect for the guy I’m fighting, it’s hard to motivate yourself. I’ve just got to keep stepping up in competition. So far, that’s worked good for me and I’ll just keep doing the same thing.”

MMAjunkie.com Radio broadcasts Monday-Friday at noon ET (9 a.m. PT) live from Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino’s Race & Sports Book. The show is hosted by “Gorgeous” George Garcia, MMAjunkie.com lead staff reporter John Morgan and producer Brian “Goze” Garcia. For more information or to download past episodes, go to www.mmajunkie.com/radio.

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